What was that?

WAS it a gold mine blast, fighter jet, asteroid, an earthquake or a volcanic explosion?

Residents across the Macedon Ranges Shire experienced an unexplained sonic boom at 10am on Wednesday morning, with Macedon Weather still unsure quite what it was.

Reports from Melton, Pyalong, Romsey and various other places poured into experts who were hard at work to determine what caused the sonic boom.

Macedon Weather’s Anna said the group began using their weather networks and tools to pull together data, public theories and even solar phenomenon, but have only been able to come to one logical conclusion.

“There was no logical explanation and we had reports flooding into us… over the next 24 hours we examined all reports and posts which uncovered at least a dozen theories. Many were easily dismissed but two theories in particular had merit,” she said.

“After mapping the reports that came in, ground zero of the blast wave was around Yandoit, just south of Castlemaine.

“We then followed up a meteor theory by checking across the globe for sightings as three separate sky streaks sighting were seen in the Macedon Ranges around this time. At this point we found significant evidence of meteors burning up in the earth’s atmosphere over Oklahoma City only four hours before the central highlands sonic boom.

“Based on the earth’s rotation and going through the densest portion of the meteor stream, late arriving fragments of the same minor meteor shower could not be ruled out. This theory became the leader but is still not confirmed at this point.”

While the boom has a logical explanation, that did not stop the rumour mill from going into overdrive on social media.

People clambered to get their stories and versions heard by Macedon Weather, but Anna said they always try to ‘keep it real’.

“Many theories were posted into the page including Fighter jets, quarry blasts, Blackwood phone tower issue, [drug related] explosions, Alien landing, Chinese satellite falling to earth, Smeaton and Mt Franklin volcanoes awakening, hypersonic weapons off the east coast… the list could go on but all could be ruled out fairly quickly and some gave us a good laugh,” she said.

“Without more evidence, it will go into the X files as the unsolved ‘Yandoit incident’ but the meteor theory is probable the most plausible at this stage.”